David Ignatius, in an opinion column for the Washington Post, describes XML as "invented several years ago by two Microsoft technologists," a claim new to most of the XML community.

Noting his find on XML-Dev, Wendell Piez asked:

"Does this misrepresentation matter? It scares me. Until that point, I was reading the article sympathetically, reflecting that Ballmer may actually be seeking to change, for the better, the way Microsoft works with its partners, competitors and customers, as Ignatius suggests. Then I come across this, and wonder who believes it."

Matt Sergeant wrote it off as "just yet another journalist not doing his research", while Sam Brown argued that "Microsoft technologies that exist today add business value which is what non-technical Executive Management is interested in."

While Microsoft's Jean Paoli was a co-editor of the XML 1.0 Recommendation, this may be the first time anyone has claimed XML was a Microsoft invention. Early credit typically goes to Jon Bosak of Sun Microsystems, who pushed hard to establish XML as a major simplification of SGML. At XTech 2000 in March, Bosak's W3C colleagues honored him as the 'father of XML'.

Update: Andrew Layman of Microsoft reports that it was a reporting error, not a claim made by Steve Ballmer.

Update: The Washington Post has issued a correction, acknowledging that XML was a product of the W3C, not Microsoft.